The Deep Splash — New East 100

Lithuania’s art scene is small yet vibrant. Living in London, curator Juste Kostikovaite wanted to create a platform devoted to émigré artists in the same spirit as the local scene. The Deep Splash project began with studio visits, with the interviews published in video form online, and has since grown into an archive showcasing original artworks, ideas and arguments by artists and cultural thinkers, located across cities like London, Dundee, Berlin, Tromsø, Amsterdam and Lausanne among others. “Now the archive has a very hybrid form: from conversations with artists to artists making their own individual artwork to illustrate ideas they are interested in. Video has been a constant, as it is the most natural, the most informative and the most accessible medium today,” explains Monika Lipšić, who took over the project from Kostikovaite. As an archive, The Deep Splash features prolific names such as Jonas Mekas, who’s often referred to as the “godfather of American avant-garde cinema”, alongside emerging practitioners, such as classically-trained composer Lina Lapelytė, who turns hip-hop lyrics into art performance, and Geistė Kinčinaitytė, who explores the relationship between outer space, colonisation and images. The Deep Splash speaks not to Lithuania’s creative diaspora, but to an era when people are relocating more frequently, and culture is becoming more hybrid as a result.

Text: Liza Premiyak
Top video: Excerpt from On the Importance of Being a Neanderthal: In 3 Voices and with a Fisherman’s Exaggeration by Valentinas Klimašauskas